That’s a pretty good deal if you can get it—you can get in big trouble at one school, in this case allegedly because of repeated drug-policy violations, and step right in at another school the next day. It’s probably easier to get a deal like that if you play football, though—especially if you play well enough to finish in the top-five of the Heisman voting.

It’s impossible to say that any other LSU student would be embraced by another university under the same circumstances. Maybe concessions are made for superlative engineering students, or outstanding drama students or writing prodigies, and the entire nation isn’t aware of it as soon as they’re made.

What’s for sure is this. In the college football world, rules are in place for someone like Mathieu to slide into place on another team immediately, as long as he’s willing to leave LSU’s Football Bowl Subdivision level … because there’s a maze of rules in place to reduce player-poaching, to restrict tampering, and to keep the “student-athletes” under the tightest of controls.

Setting aside his dismissal for a moment, if Mathieu had wanted to simply play somewhere else the next two years—at USC because he liked the weather, or at Florida because he liked the defensive scheme, or at Texas because his best friend plays there—he’d have to sit out a year. And if his or another conference had certain rules in place, or if coach Les Miles just felt like sticking it to him on the way out the door, he’d even have his choice of schools limited, one-year penalty or not.

Move down to FCS, though, and you can play right away. And now, as it’s been proven for the second time just this summer, you can do that no matter what lousy track record you left behind at your former school. The small schools welcome you with open arms, and apparently blocked consciences.

Maybe McNeese State, within driving distance of LSU and of Mathieu’s New Orleans hometown, is committed to shepherding a troubled young man onto the right path, the way institutions of higher learning ideally are mandated to do.

Or, like Alabama State (a storied HBCU, a Historically Black College or University) with Crowell, it can’t wait to capitalize on a major talent falling into its lap, and will cross its fingers that this young future NFL draft pick won’t melt down there, too.

Mathieu and Crowell, then, use college campuses as laboratories for their talent without worrying about the boundaries everyone else is supposed to respect. Those campuses use those young men right back, without regard for anything besides the wins they can produce for them.

A textbook example of the “culture” that NCAA president Mark Emmert talked about needing to change, right?

In this culture, an FBS athlete is literally bound by his scholarship agreement to the whims of his coach, program and conference and has nothing remotely close to freedom of movement, regardless of his reason or preference. Ask former Maryland football player Danny O’Brien or former Wisconsin basketball player Jarrod Uthoff about that.

That stinks.

So does this: the window is open to move down to the FCS—and the fastest way through that window now is to break the rules, or break the law.

Naturally, the NCAA and Emmert pronounced in April that it is looking into making changes in the transfer rules, calling it an issue of fairness to the players. Four months have passed since. Hardly moving with all deliberate speed, the way it did on the Penn State sanctions last month.

It’s not that Penn State didn’t deserve quick, decisive action. But either the NCAA cares about changing that “culture” it derided so fiercely then—the culture that had “gone awry”—or it doesn’t.

Either it is interested in “maintaining the appropriate balance of our values,’’ as Emmert said then, or it isn’t.

That precedent the NCAA was setting with that decision? Any time it wants to truly put it in action would be just fine.